Name: German Buns
Ingredients: 2 lbs flour; 4 lbs sultanas; 4 oz baking powder; 4 lbs butter; 4 lbs caster sugar; 2 eggs; 4 pints milk

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

German Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C).

Make the dough

Beat the butter and caster sugar together until creamy.
Add the eggs and mix well.
Stir in the flour, baking powder, sultanas, and milk to form a dough.
Divide the dough into pieces weighing about 2 oz each.
Shape each piece slightly and place them on a greased baking sheet.

Bake

Brush each bun with egg wash and sprinkle with broken loaf sugar.
Bake for about 12 minutes until golden.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour: Provides the structure that holds the dough and buns together as they bake.
Butter: Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the creamed mixture hold air.
Caster sugar: Sweetens the buns and helps create a soft, tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Eggs: Bind the dough, add richness, and help set the structure during baking.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the oven so the buns rise and become light.
Sultanas: Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the buns.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.